


children of the wild ones

by theladiesyouhate



Category: Mob City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, apparently this fandom needed a werewolf AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3726355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladiesyouhate/pseuds/theladiesyouhate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no wolves in Los Angeles, that much is common knowledge, but there are whispers of men and women with wildness in their eyes. They’re urban legends, ghost stories, tales told to frightened children and to bar patrons who roll their eyes and scoff. <i>That’s from that Lon Chaney picture</i>, they’ll say disbelievingly, tone dripping sarcasm. <i>You’re full of shit.</i></p>
<p>(or an AU where there are werewolves in Los Angeles and the humans caught between them don't know what stories to believe)</p>
            </blockquote>





	children of the wild ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverfadingrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfadingrain/gifts).



> This is entirely Aubrey's fault. She planted the idea in my head and it sort of grew from there.
> 
> This was written in one day and is entirely unbetaed so I apologize for that. I just needed to get this out on paper. So here it is, the werewolf AU. I don't really have plans to write more in this 'verse, but if people like it then I might continue it with another piece. This, as it stands, is mostly just character studies with bonus werewolves. I hope you all enjoy.

1.

Hal has heard the stories.

There are no wolves in Los Angeles, that much is common knowledge, but there are whispers of men and women with wildness in their eyes. They’re urban legends, ghost stories, tales told to frightened children and to bar patrons who roll their eyes and scoff. _That’s from that Lon Chaney picture_ , they’ll say disbelievingly, tone dripping with sarcasm. _You’re full of shit_.

People make jokes about the criminals who haunt Los Angeles’s streets in the same way. _Yeah, I heard Bugsy Siegel’s a goddamn animal. I heard there’s a man who works for him who’ll rip your throat out with his teeth._ These jokes will be followed by loud laughter, as if that can drive away the very real monsters under the bed.

Whenever someone makes a joke about it in the precinct, Hal normally sighs disappointedly and then looks around at his men. There’s something in the way their shoulders stiffen and they give sideways glances to the speaker that makes him wonder.

He brings it up with Bill one evening as they’re leaving work. “Werewolves, huh. You’d think grown men could tell the difference between the pictures and real life.”

Bill’s smile is cold and doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’d think,” he says, voice even. “But people’ll believe anything nowadays. That’s why we’ve got to bring these men down. Show the world that they’re not invincible. They’re just monsters, the scum on the street.”

Hal nods and tries to pretend that Bill’s shadow hasn’t morphed into something feral looking and that the glint of his teeth isn’t wolflike at all.

 

2.

Bill Parker comes from a long line of wolves. His mother tells him stories about his lineage and Bill wants to make them proud, to live up to their memories. He could stay in Deadwood, make a solid life for himself there, but he knows he has to do more. So he goes to the big city and tries to make a name for himself there.

It’s terrifying, leaving his pack. He throws himself into work and a loveless marriage to numb the ache, hoping to find connection there. It fails, of course, and ends in divorce and him being made the laughingstock of the LAPD. If it weren’t for Hal taking him under his wing, he might’ve left the city.

It’s around that time he finds his purpose.

It isn’t loneliness that’s eating away at him. It’s seeing the crime that saturates the city, staining the shining dreams of good, honest people. He hates it, hates it with enough fire that he sometimes worries he’ll slip up and transform right then and there. He wants to clean the streets up, to return Los Angeles to her former glory.

So he starts building himself another pack. He meets another born wolf in traffic, a smart kid named Mike Hendry. There are two bitten wolves who pal around in arson, Jack Bray and Nick Bledsoe. A shy kid just out of law school named Tug Purcell shows up not too long after, recently bitten and trying to prove himself. During the war he picks up two more strays, a charming Iowa boy named Pat Dolan and his best friend, a quiet man by the name of Eddy Sanderson. All of them are beta wolves and they instantly recognize Bill as what he is, the alpha of the pack.

He organizes them into one unit, with Hal in charge. Hal doesn’t know the truth behind why Bill chose these men, but he takes care of them all the same. And so they face the criminal element together. It makes sense, pack going against pack. And Bill knows his pack is stronger, better than the misfit group Siegel’s got surrounding him.

The only trouble comes when Hal introduces him to Joe Teague. Bill can smell it on him in a second. Teague’s a lone wolf, and has a streak of alpha in him that sets his teeth on edge. But the man is quiet enough to not pose too much of a threat. He seems to only care about keeping his head down and doing his job.

Besides, Bill thinks, one more makes his pack even stronger. There’s no way they can’t win now.

 

3.

Joe gets the bite during the war and that’s what truly ruins his life.

He thinks he could’ve carried the burden of war back home just fine if he didn’t have to bring this curse to Jasmine as well. That’s what ends their marriage. He couldn’t keep the secret from her, and it brings out her own secrets as well. They divorce within a month after Joe comes home and it hurts.

He thinks she might’ve been part of his pack, whatever that means.

Ned handles the bite better than him. Or at least, he damn well acts like he is. He’s the other part of Joe’s pack, but instead of sticking by Joe’s side he goes running off to be Bugsy Siegel’s lapdog. Joe would hate him for it if he didn’t understand Ned’s drive and ambition. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, more than he thought it would, but he understands. It’s enough to keep their friendship (because that’s what it is, he tells himself, just friendship) alive.

He tries and mostly fails to join Parker’s pack. Most of them distrust him from the start. Hell, Mike practically bares his teeth and growls whenever he walks by. But Eddy reaches out to him, out of some misplaced sense of duty, and that means Pat comes around soon enough too. It’s nice to have something, a group to be a part of. Joe can feel his sharp edges softening a little.

But in the end, it still comes down to Jasmine and Ned. Ned tells him to protect Jasmine and he does it without a second thought. Even if Jasmine doesn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore and Ned’s ambition takes precedence over him, Joe would do anything for them. He’d tear the world apart if it meant keeping them both safe.

Sometimes he drives out past the city limits on clear nights and shifts, runs wild, howling his grief and anger at the sky. He feels free that way. Maybe this monster was always inside him.

Maybe he was just made to be lonely.

 

4.

Ned hates being a wolf. He doesn’t like to think there’s any part of him that’s wild and untamable. He wants — no — needs to be in control at all times, and this? This is not control. This is chaos stirring under his skin, pushing at his seams, and he’s terrified he’ll slip up someday and expose himself.

At least it gets him in good with Ben. “You’re just like us, kid,” he said the day they met, flashing a bright smile and showing too many teeth. Sid Rothman just glared at him, growling low in the back of his throat.

At first, Ned assumed it was just because he wasn’t a born wolf, that he’d been turned into a monster instead of being born one. Later on, he realizes it’s just because Sid doesn’t like sharing his and Ben’s special little secret (well, one of them at least, Ned realizes later on after he catches them necking like a pair of teenagers in Ben’s office when they didn’t know anyone else was around) with someone new.

And share it Ben does. The first full moon, he invites Ned to go for a run with them. When Ned politely declines, because he doesn’t like changing and would prefer to shift at little as possible, even when the moon pulls on his bones and the wolf inside him stirs in a way that makes him almost want to change. “I said you should come along, kid,” he says firmly, and Ned instantly backs down. He’s done enough reading to understand what’s going on here. Ben’s an alpha. He’s just a beta. He has to listen. So he gets into Ben’s car, meeting Sid’s glare with an equally fierce one of his own, and lets Ben drive them out to the desert.

Ben barely parks the car before he’s already out the door, shifting into something huge and fierce and hulking. Sid’s just as fast; his new shape is leaner than Ben’s but he’s just as terrifying and ferocious. Ned doesn’t change as fast, because it still fucking hurts to shift, and he’s almost embarrassed at how small he is next to the pair of them. But they run as a pack anyway. Ben kills a few animals and Sid kills even more. Ned bites back a whine at the sight of the brutality, and it’s only when Ben looks at him and growls that he kills something on his own.

The next morning he throws up and hates himself for showing weakness like that.

He wonders if he should’ve just stuck with Joe after the war. Ben might be his alpha but he feels more at home with Joe. There’s a connection there he doesn’t have with his newfound pack. Words like “family” and “love” come to mind, but Ned buries those thoughts deep down, next to the wolf inside him. That’s true weakness right there, whatever he feels for Joe. Jasmine too, which is even more confusing for him.

So he goes to work and smiles a wolflike grin to match Ben’s and tells himself the ambition feels just as good as a real family would.

 

5.

Benny knows they send him out west because he takes up too much space in New York.

They’re all born wolves there, him and Sid and Charlie and Meyer, but somehow Benny doesn’t fit in as well as the others do. His enemies call him crazy and even his friends say he can be too wild. So when he thinks about going out West, Meyer advises him to do so. Says it might be a good fit for him.

Which is how he and Sid got to be kings of their own city. Benny likes it that way. He likes being the top dog, the alpha. Back in New York, he had to play by the rules of Charlie’s new little empire. No kings, just a senate. And that’s the smart move, but damn it feels good to be the one in charge of fucking everything.

He can tell the wolf is bleeding into his human form more and more. He’s hungry, always hungry for more. He makes his way through the papers and Hollywood, collecting friends and fame. It satisfies him in ways he’s never been fully satisfied before, but damn does he still want more.

And then there’s the Flamingo. His beautiful Flamingo. The thing that’s gonna make him really famous. Everyone looks down their noses at him for it, everyone but Sid. Even Sid has his reservations, Benny knows him well enough to tell, but he’s the only one decent enough to keep it to his fucking self. Benny knows this is gonna be bigger than anything anyone’s ever seen before, that this hotel will be the start of an empire that’ll rival anything else built before it.

Sometimes, when he’s out there, he’ll wait until everyone else has gone home for the night and then shift and run as fast and as far as he can across the desert. This, he thinks, this is my empire. It’ll stretch out farther than the eye can see. Farther than even I can run.

He’ll run and run and yeah, this is why he loves being out West. He finally has the space to let himself be free.

 

6.

Sid knows that he’s just as much an alpha as Benny is. If he really wanted, he could be a king too.

Funny thing is, he doesn’t want to be king. He’s content to be Ben’s second-in-command, to play the role of beta wolf. It makes his job easier; Benny causes more trouble than Sid ever thought possible, so he spends a hell of a lot of time cleaning up those messes. The way he cleans up, it’s better his name and face stay mostly out of the papers.

Still, he’s not some sniveling wretch like Cohen or Stax. He’s got power. Benny knows it. If he were anyone else, Benny might resent him for it, but instead he leans on him for it. He lets Sid be the alpha wolf when the situation calls for it.

It’s how Sid’s saved their lives on more than one occasion. He’ll touch Benny’s arm or shoulder and murmur a few calming words and Ben will relax under his touch, the fight going out of him as easy as it came. Then it’s back to words and diplomacy, something Ben is far better at than people normally give him credit for.

“I wonder what I’d do without you,” Ben says after one such occasion where Sid’s quick thinking and calm demeanor stopped him from starting a war with Jack Dragna.

“You’d get yourself killed within a week,” Sid says offhandedly. Ben laughs as though it’s a joke, but Sid doesn’t find it funny at all. He worries about Ben constantly, because Ben’s all reaction, all fire and temper, and one day it’ll backfire on him.

(The day Ben dies, Sid leaves town. He drives to the edge of the city, parks his car, and shifts. He takes off running as far and as fast as he can, as if every inch he puts between himself and Los Angeles will wipe Ben from his mind.

He doesn’t want to feel this grief anymore. He doesn’t want to be human. And as much as he’d like to rip whoever killed Benny to shreds, it won’t do anything. Benny is dead. He won’t come back.

So neither does Sid.)

 

7.

Despite what people might think, Jasmine knows how to defend herself. With the family she comes from, of course she has to.

She learned at a young age that the ghosts and ghouls and monsters under the bed were very real. Sometimes her father found them and killed them. The Fontaine family’s speciality was werewolves. And even though Jasmine begged and begged, her mother insisted that that was not a suitable career for a young lady. That didn’t stop her father from teaching her how to take care of herself though. After all, as Jasmine told him, all wide eyes and insistence, she had to continue on the family tradition.

Of course, as luck would have it, her beautiful, brave husband comes back home a wolf. He shifts one night on accident in the middle of a nightmare and she screams and goes for the knife in her underwear drawer. In the morning they stare at each other with terrified, exhausted eyes, and Jasmine asks for a divorce.

She was taught to hunt these creatures, not love them.

She still loves Joe though, loves him deeply. She cares for Ned too, maybe even loves him as well. When she thinks of monsters now, she thinks of Joe’s warm smile and Ned’s sense of humor, of how handsome they both are and how gentle they were the night the three of them spent together before both of them shipped out. She knows neither of them are monsters.

Ben Siegel and Sid Rothman are different stories. She keeps a small silver blade tucked into her garter and remembers all her father taught her each time she steps into the Clover. There are monsters lurking there, and not all of them are wolves. They look at her as though she’s something to eat, to swallow whole. They do not know what she’s capable of.

One day, Jasmine thinks as Mickey makes a rude remark and Ben grins his Big Bad Wolf smile, she’ll show them just what she’s made of. That this girl as just as sharp teeth as they do, and that she is every bit as ferocious as they are. Until that day, she plays her role as the naive woman who doesn’t know a thing about the world she’s stepped into. She can keep up appearances until the time is right. She’s very, very patient.

So by day she plays Little Red Riding Hood. At night, she dreams of running free, with two wolves at her side. When she wakes up, reaching for Joe and Ned, the bed is always empty.

She never knew if she was reaching for them so they could protect her or so she could protect them. It's only later, after she's left the city and they turn up on her doorstep, she understands. She pulls them both into her arms because she knows she'll be the one to keep them both safe.

Her two boys. Her two wolves.

 

8.

Mickey hears stories about men who turn into wolves and he laughs. Out of all the crazy shit in L.A., that’s the craziest of it all.

He focuses on what’s real, on doing right by Ben and his operation and on climbing the ladder so that maybe one day he can be king too. That’s what’s really important.

He also focuses on cleaning up his act, on making himself presentable. He dresses nice, like how Ben taught him, and tries to learn more and more so he can fit in with those high society types. He wants that, that love and adoration, all of it tinged with a little bit of fear. He’s stopped being a joke and now he’s someone respectable. And someone respectable doesn’t believe in ghost stories about werewolves and shit.

Still, he wonders sometimes, about the way Ben’s always posturing and the way Sid can calm him with a touch. How sometimes their voices slip into something feral, snarling threats that practically drip blood. He notices that the Stax kid, who’s brighter than the three of ‘em put together, bites his lip and listens when Ben gives an order, as if he’s being compelled to do it just ‘cause Ben says.

He might not have a lot of schooling but he’s observant. It’s how he got this far. So he pays attention to those little details.

In later years, he starts to spin those urban legends himself. “Yeah, I ran with wolves,” he says, as the dinner guests or audience laugh. “That Benny Siegel, he was a wild one.” The tales always change of course — he forgets Sid’s name after a couple years, just remembers him as a shadow at Ben’s side, and once Ned disappears around the same time one of Parker’s mob squad takes off Mickey writes him off as just another dead man — and the older he gets, the less people listen to him.

But Mickey remembers though. And as time passes, he starts to believe those stories he heard. He’ll look at the old pictures of them at the club and think about the strange little things and how they all added up to something.

“I ran with wolves,” he says, even when everyone has stopped listening to him. “I was one of them too.”


End file.
